nd breaking camp, and then
the carts creaked out in line. They halted at six for breakfast and
marched again at seven. Dinner was at two, supper at six, and tents
were seldom pitched before nine at night. On Sunday the procession
rested and some one read divine service. The oxen and ponies foraged
for themselves. By limiting camp to five hours, in spite of the slow
pace of the oxen, forty to fifty miles a day could be made on a good
trail in fair weather. While the scout led the way, the captain and
his lieutenants kept the long procession in line; and the travellers
for the most part dozed lazily in their carts, dreaming of the fortunes
awaiting them in Cariboo. Some nights, when the captain permitted a
longer halt than usual and when camp-fires blazed before the tents, men
played the violin and sang and danced. Each man was his own cook.
Three or four occupied {60} each tent. In the company was one woman,
with two children. She was an Irishwoman; but she bore the name of
Shubert, from which we may infer that her husband was not an Irishman.

Sunday having intervened, the travellers did not reach Portage la
Prairie until the fourth day out. Another week passed before they
arrived at Fort Ellice. Heavy rains came on now, and James M'Kay,
chief trader at Fort Ellice, opened his doors to the gold-seekers.
Harness and carts repaired and more pemmican bought, the travellers
crossed the Qu'Appelle river in a Hudson's Bay scow, paying toll of
fifty cents a cart. From the Qu'Appelle westward the journey grew more
arduous. The weather became oppressively hot and mosquitoes swarmed
from the sloughs. At Carlton and at Fort Pitt the fur-traders' 'string
band'--husky-dogs in wolfish packs--surrounded the camp of the
Overlanders and stole pemmican from under the tent-flaps. From Fort
Pitt westward the trail crossed a rough, wooded country, and there were
no more scows to take the ox-carts across the rivers. Eleven days of
continuous rain had flooded the sloughs into swamps; and in three days
as many as eight corduroy bridges had to be built. Two {61} long trees
were felled parallel and light poles were laid across the floating
trees. Where the trees swerved to the current, some one would swim out
and anchor them with ropes till the hundred carts had passed safely to
the other side.

It was the 21st of July when the travellers came out on the high banks
of the North Saskatchewan, flowing broad and swift, opposite